Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Service Tunnel
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The adrenaline running through my veins turned my exhaustion into cold steel.
Gabriel was six feet three inches of solid muscle, weighing over two hundred pounds.
There was no way a five-foot-four maid could carry him through the estate’s front gates.
I grabbed a clean gurney, kicked the brake locks open, and tilted the surgical slab.
"Gabriel, you have to help me," I pleaded, leaning over his battered chest.
"If you stay here, you burn."
A deep groan ripped through his clenched teeth as his bruised muscles strained against the paralysis.
With a monumental surge of raw will, he threw his upper body sideways, rolling onto the transport gurney.
The impact jarred his bullet wounds, and fresh dark crimson seeped through the white surgical dressings.
He clamped his jaw shut to keep from screaming, sweat beading across his tattooed collarbone.
I grabbed Dr. Mercer’s discarded lab coat, threw it over my blood-splattered maid uniform, and pulled the black body bag over Gabriel's lower half.
To any security camera, it would look like an orderly transporting a corpse to the basement loading dock.
I opened the double doors of the private surgical ward and wheeled the gurney into the dimly lit hallway.
The mansion was unusually quiet, but the air smelled of gun oil and expensive cigars.
Upstairs in the great hall, raised voices echoed through the ventilation shafts.
Carmine's lieutenants were already drinking Gabriel’s vintage bourbon, arguing over territory splits and extortion routes.
They thought the king was dead, and the hyenas were tearing the carcass apart.
I turned the gurney sharply into the laundry chute corridor.
For three years, I had mapped every forgotten corner of the Falcone manor with a mop bucket and a ring of brass keys.
Beneath the west wing lay a network of brick utility tunnels built during Prohibition to smuggle Canadian whiskey into the city.
The service elevator was waiting, its steel gate squealing as I pulled it shut.
We descended into the damp, subterranean belly of the mansion where the furnace roared like an ancient beast.
The air down here was thick with coal dust and rotting timber.
I shoved the gurney off the elevator and into the narrow tunnel that led toward the old carriage house half a mile away.
"Matilda..." Gabriel’s voice broke the silence, rough as crushed stone.
I paused, wiping a strand of hair from my sweaty forehead. "Save your breath, Mr. Falcone."
"Why?" he breathed, his dark gaze burning into mine through the dim tunnel bulbs.
"You owe me... nothing."
"You treated me like a human being," I said, leaning my entire body weight into the gurney to keep it moving over the uneven flagstones.
"In this house of wolves, that made you a god."
He exhaled slowly, his cold fingers reaching out to brush against the hem of my apron.
"Carmine... poisoned the ammunition," Gabriel whispered, fighting through waves of delirium.
"Tetrodotoxin... mixed with cobra venom."
"It mimics brain death... paralyzes the motor cortex."
My blood ran cold as the pieces clicked together.
Carmine hadn't just gotten lucky in an ambush; he had engineered an assassination that would pass an autopsy.
He had wanted Gabriel alive enough to feel the cold earth being shoveled onto his face.
"We’re almost at the carriage house," I urged, picking up the pace as water dripped from the vaulted ceiling.
Ahead of us, the rusted iron gate of the old storm drain appeared.
Parked in the overgrown gravel driveway beyond was my beat-up 2012 Honda Civic.
It was a rusted dent on wheels, the complete opposite of Gabriel's fleet of armored Maybachs.
Suddenly, a flashlight beam cut through the storm drain grating above our heads.
A heavy boot crunched on gravel.
"Hey!" a gruff voice shouted from above.
"Who’s down in the drainage trench?!"
May you like
I froze, my hand flying to Gabriel’s mouth to stifle his labored breathing.
The hunt had already begun.
